The Welsh chronicler and ‘soldier of Calais’, Elis Gruffydd (1490–1552), observes in his world history (Creation–1552) that the English criticize the Welsh for taking excessive pride in Arthur and, in defense of his countrymen, he delivers this riposte:

Gruffydd's observation seems to have been as true for the twelfth century as it was for the sixteenth. We do not have any early Welsh, Cornish, or Breton statements of belief in King Arthur's survival, but, beginning with the Gesta regum Anglorum (c. 1125) of William of Malmesbury, we encounter a series of claims made by Anglo-Norman and Continental writers that the Welsh, Cornish, and Bretons believed Arthur had never died and would return.

The English and Continental formulation of exspectare Arthurum, which was exploited by the court writers of Henry II, implies that Arthur escaped the way of all flesh and was a special messianic figure for his Brittonic kinsmen. This idea is at odds with the fundamental Christian teaching that Jesus Christ is the one true messiah and that salvation comes through him alone.

Arthur of Brittany and the discovery of Arthur's bones

The competition for Arthur's legacy during Henry II's reign manifested as a contest of ideas involving rival interpretations of history and political prophecy. Was Arthur primarily a Brittonic resistance fighter or a conquering sovereign? Did Arthur die? Was he destined to return and, if so, how? As Henry's reign drew to its close, the political exploitation of the figure of Arthur in the Plantagenet world moved beyond hermeneutics in two notable ways. First, at Easter (29 March) 1187, the posthumous son of Geoffrey Plantagenet by Constance of Penthièvre, duchess of Brittany, was born at Nantes. He was christened Arthur and acclaimed the longawaited Arthurus redivivus. Second, around the year 1191, Arthur's remains were ‘discovered’ and excavated at the Benedictine abbey of Glastonbury in Somerset. Both events had major implications for the Arthurian tradition. The birth of the new Arthur, who was of Plantagenet and Breton stock, was heralded as the fulfillment of the Breton Hope. The discovery of Arthur's bones, if genuine, stood as positive proof that King Arthur had truly died, was buried, and would not rise again in fulfillment of the prophecy – at least in his original body.

These two real-life developments in the Arthurian tradition are the focus of this chapter. The genesis of these events has considerable implications for our understanding of Arthurianism in Plantagenet England. For instance, if the Crown orchestrated the Glastonbury discovery, then it is reasonable to conclude that the Plantagenet kings perceived the Breton Hope as an enduring threat to their rule. Henry II's stance in relation to the naming of his grandson Arthur is also consequential. If Henry approved of the name choice, then we are observing a heightened appropriation of King Arthur for the hegemonic interests of the Plantagenets: Henry was making his grandson the new focalization of the Breton Hope. On the basis of his lineage, Arthur of Brittany had unique potential in this regard. Not only was his maternal grandfather, Conan IV, a native duke of Brittany, his maternal grandmother, Margaret, was sister to two successive kings of Scotland: Malcolm IV (r. 1153–65) and William I (r. 1165–1214).

This book argues that the early modern period was a vital juncture in the history of mysticism. It seeks to reposition the seventeenth century especially as a key period of distrust, suspicion and derision towards mystical experience in the West, one which still has significant ramifications for scholars today. This ‘twilight of the mystics’ witnessed the final separation of mysticism from the major institutional churches of the West. Gone was the privileged position mysticism commanded in the medieval period, along with any authority mystical experience had in shaping the doctrinal elements of Christianity. Instead, mysticism was now understood to be a personal and private spirituality, a ‘way of knowing’ which was ‘experimental’, ‘experiential’ and ‘extraordinary’, an ineffable experience an individual mystic ‘felt’. Critics of mysticism constantly reasserted that such private, subjective and emotional experiences could never be validated as legitimate sources of authority, nor be trusted as a basis of doctrine. This significant development has been theorized by several scholars but never given the full attention it deserves. The most astute, if perhaps too brief, description of this process was made by Bernard McGinn a decade ago when he commented that mysticism, as a creative aspect within the major institutional Western churches, was ‘moribund, if not quite dead’ by the end of the seventeenth century.

This problem was only compounded when mystical authors sought to defend themselves. Their immediate response was the creation of a ‘mystical tradition’ of authors who set a historical precedent for their experiences. But this development only further segregated mysticism as a separate and esoteric ‘way of knowing’, one with its own language, terminology, rhetoric and style. Through this, mysticism became a modus loquendi, a manner of speaking, as well as manner of writing; a separate literary genre with a language of its own. Scholars are only just beginning to realize that their own formulations of a ‘mystical tradition’, and their insistences on certain figures within that canon, is the repetition of a process initially undertaken in the early modern period in light of fierce criticism. This separate canon faced renewed attacks from critics, who now sought to prove the entire tradition was either unnecessary, delusional, heretical or anti-Christian (i.e. pagan). Equally, these defences produced ‘endless vocabularies’ of mysticism which aimed to clear up difficulties and inconsistencies in the terminology.

We have already seen Marischal's major conflicts with the earl of Huntly and Chancellor Maitland, both of which were intimately tied to court politics and resolved by 1595. Beyond these major disputes, which encompassed court and locality, Marischal pursued a series of lesser local clashes with several individuals right up until his death. Whereas most studies of feuding and conflict in Scotland concentrate on larger specific feuds, or explore one particular type of conflict, few have considered the individual perspective, which puts the larger struggles in context and gives a greater sense of the full spectrum of dispute. So, while Marischal's feud with Huntly up to 1595 is the most sensational conflict, the underlying root of that struggle being the jurisdiction of the Lieutenant of the North, it can be better understood if we look to Marischal's lesser disputes, in terms of both their underlying principles and the resulting conduct. These feuds cast useful light on the running, exercise and priorities of his lordship, as they show what kinds of issue provoked the earl into action. In particular, they show the severe problems arising from disputed boundaries of varying sorts: not only those of land and property, but also of jurisdiction and authority.

Defining and categorising conflict in this period is difficult. Keith Brown highlighted how contemporary definitions of feuding were unhelpfully vague, so bloodfeud is best thought of as being only one facet of a range of disputes and modes of dispute resolution. Marischal conducted his quarrels within the context of a transitional period, when the informal framework of the Scottish bloodfeud – essentially ritualised violence supported by a kin network to achieve dispute settlement – gave way to a more legalistic court-based system of dispute settlement and corrective justice. Whether Marischal's case corresponds to this decline in violence and out-of-court mediation in favour of legal recourse is inherently difficult to answer; the evidence is naturally skewed towards the latter owing to the records it generated. No doubt there were several confrontations, meetings and settlements throughout the earl's life that went unrecorded. The major problem in assessing Marischal's feud with the earl of Huntly in the previous chapters was the lack of detail; from contemporary reports we know that it was happening, but we do not know exactly how.

In 1577 Raphael Holinshed published a history of the British Isles in two volumes entitled The Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland. Within it was included William Harrison's most famous work, A Description of England, a treatise dedicated to describing England's geographic, economic, social, religious, and political events. For example, Chapter 14, ‘Of castels and holds’, tells an illuminating tale of the history of the castle in England. Harrison begins:

The tale continues with King Stephen, Henry II, and Henry III, after which we reach Henry VIII:

For Harrison there was a clear connection between threats – internal and external – and the building of castles. Similarly, for many modern scholars this link between conflict and defensive architecture was straightforward. Moreover, however – and which is more relevant to the pages that follow – Harrison constantly refers to the people who built them, expressing the intimate relationship between castles and those who built and occupied them. This association is the crux of this book.

This study takes a firmly interdisciplinary approach to the socio-cultural understanding of castles in the early Tudor period. Its central focus is not on the architectural prototypes or the typological features of the early Tudor castle, nor does it make much comment on architectural form. Instead, working from the assumption that both space and objects are meaningful, and that their meanings both affected people and were affected by the people who interacted in the built environment, it focuses on the people and everyday activities that were associated with the castle in early Tudor England and Wales. It explores how the spatial organisation of the castle influenced the interactions between the different groups of people who lived in, worked in, and visited these buildings, and thereby illuminates the semiotics and the socio-cultural associations of people, objects, and space.

On 18 July 1469 Queen Elizabeth Woodville entered the City of Norwich via the Westwyk Gate (later renamed St Benedict's Gate) on the west side of the city. Upon hearing of her impending visit from the ‘shirreve of Norffolk hym silf’, John Aubry, the Mayor of Norwich, had written to ‘the right reuerent Ser Henry Spelman, Recordour of the cité of Norwich’ on 6 July to ask his advice about appropriate measures for the Queen's visit: ‘And I desired to haue knowe of hym [the sheriff of Norfolk], by cause this shuld be hir first comyng hedir, how we shuld be rulyd, as well in hir resseyuyng, as in hir abidyng here’. The ‘shirreve of Norffolk’ had impressed upon Aubry that the Queen ‘wooll desire to ben resseyued and attendid as wurshepfully as euir was quene a-forn hir’.

The principal information concerning the visit of Elizabeth Woodville to Norwich is recorded in the Chamberlains’ Account Books (1469–90), held in the archives of the Norfolk Record Office, Norwich. The accounts occupy folios 10r–14r and give full details of the financial outlay for the Queen's Entry. They were written by Geoffrey Spirleng, who was one of the Norwich Chamberlains heavily involved in the Queen's reception. These costs and expenses were accounted for by John Coke and William Henstede Junior, Chamberlains of the city. Folios 10r–11r consist of payments made by Coke and Henstede, and folios 11v–12v present invoices from people engaged in the preparations. Itemised accounts from the notebook of Henstede occur in folios 12v–14r. Since selections from the accounts have often been alluded to previously but not transcribed or translated in full, we have provided a full transcription and translation in our Appendix 1.

Our purpose in analysing the document is to investigate the nature and character of the reception and the role of William Parnell in creating the event. Many other people were involved in the creation and preparation of the reception but Parnell was engaged for his undoubted skill in providing the theatrical flair and colour to the proceedings. Other records beyond those of NCR 18a–2 offer additional information concerning Parnell's range of theatrical projects which enable us to consider him as what was later to be designated a ‘property player’.

At the close of the play Mankind, performed during the Shrovetide of 1471, the character Mercy explicitly conflated the play world and the real world by entreating the provincial audience, with the lines above, to examine their personal moralities. Since the performance had come to its end and Mercy had completed his task of delivering the play's eponymous protagonist, Mankind, from eternal damnation, all that was left to do was to remind the audience that they needed to apply this exemplar to their own moral ‘condicyons’ (Mankind 908). They must search and examine themselves, think and remember that the world they lived in was as full of ‘vanité’ (Mankind 909) as the allegorical play world in which they had just been immersed. Scholars have suggested that the play was performed either in a guildhall or in a church; certainly this performance took place somewhere in East Anglia close to either Bishop's Lynn or Cambridge, and it was thus to this real-world context that Mercy gestured when, with his final lines, he elided drama and reality.

The epilogue above is just one example of the play's distinctive ability to make its audience complicit in the action of the drama by bridging the divide between the play world and the real world; other well-known examples include the Christmas song and the request for payment from the audience for the devil, Titivillus, to appear. However, Mercy's closing remarks, like so many other moments in the play, reward closer inspection, for they may be making a more pointed accusation than at first appears. If, as many scholars have noted, the play's often-quoted line ‘O ye soverens that sytt and ye brothern that stonde ryght uppe’ (Mankind 29) distinguishes between the different social statuses of groups in the audience based on their locations in the playing space, then it is significant that Mercy's final speech is addressed solely to the ‘wyrschepyll sofereyns’ (Mankind 903).

George Keith, fifth Earl Marischal (1554–1623) is known, if at all, principally as the founder of Marischal College in Aberdeen. He is perhaps sometimes recognised as King James VI's ambassador to Denmark in 1589, when he married Princess Anna as James’ proxy, and maybe, occasionally, as the founder of the towns of Stonehaven and Peterhead. Yet he had a much richer and more distinguished life and career than just these fleeting moments. As well as being a key agent in, and witness to, the political struggles in the early part of James’ reign, he is a fascinating case study of noble power and, in particular, Protestant noble power. This is especially so at this crucial time of change, when the Scottish nobility had to cope with the long and contested aftermath of the Protestant Reformation of 1560, combined with the rule of a highly intelligent and somewhat unusual king, as well as the loss of that king to England in 1603. Rather than a narrow biographical study of one forgotten rich man, this book aims to be a study of the management of the earldom that man represented. This will be explored from three particular perspectives: the political, the religious and the regional. In the broadest terms, this book aims to explore the strategies behind long-term, stable, Protestant lordship in Scotland during the reign of James VI. The primary aim is to explore how an earldom was managed in this period, and what that entailed. The secondary aim is to see how this fits into the wider trends we know about Scottish noble power at this time.

A number of factors make Marischal worthy of further exploration. He appears regularly in contemporary records, across a broad range of spheres. From about 1544 the Earls Marischal were identified as Protestants: remarkably early converts and especially so for noblemen of the north-east, which is usually characterised as religiously conservative and Catholic. Because of his Protestantism, Marischal was keenly observed by the English ambassadors to Scotland, whose dispatches provide a wealth of evidence for his activities, albeit sometimes coloured by court gossip, misinformation and rumour.

In the opening lines of The Loss Library (2011), Ivan Vladislavić explains the concept underlying this short work: ‘These notes deal with unsettled accounts. They concern stories I imagined but could not write, or started to write but could not finish. Most were drafted to some point before being put aside, but a few went no further than a line or two in a notebook’ (7).

‘Mouse Drawing’, for example, tells of a writing residency in Stuttgart where the author wakes up to find a mysterious sketch on his minimalist white table: ‘Some of the lines were faint and curly, others were emphatic, shooting off at angles like fragments of a graph’ (73). When he opens his laptop, the mystery dissolves in an instant: there is fragment of pencil lead lodged in the underside of the mouse; and so now he reconstructs how the previous night's work has resulted in this unforeseen graphic:

The fiction that (almost) resulted was to have been a Borges-like tale in which a writer begins to discern the secrets of the universe in such diagrams, and so sets himself to work in the dark to generate more: ‘His every creative act now excretes a secondary product’ (75). The image is true for The Loss Library as a whole. We are reading a non-fictional by-product that comes to stand in place of, but also encompasses and archives, all the unrealised ideas it describes. The draft of the original ‘Mouse Drawing’ vanishes in transit back to Johannesburg, along with all the other material from a year's work. In the decade since, Vladislavić writes, he has forgotten exactly what else was lost. The books that mattered were replaced, ‘and I soon learned to live without the half-formed fictions and copies of correspondence. But “Mouse Drawing” will not rest. I hear it rustling now in the waste-paper basket. It wants to begin again’ (76).

Secular and religious landscapes of commemoration in England and Wales were deeply interconnected and used a variety of techniques to advance the memory of the individual. Lay communities were very conscious of perpetuating the memory of their own community, as well as their familial or collective memory. Local magnates were particularly eager to establish, promote, and perpetuate the memory of their family. This helped to bind the local community to the lordship and vice versa, while at the same time helping to cement their place in the spiritual memory of religious institutions. The importance of memory for the early Tudor elite is substantiated by the multitude of ways that a family or individual might attempt to commemorate themselves. Visible means of commemoration and remembrance took the form of architectural features such as heraldry in and around the castle and effigies and tombs in the local parish churches, as well as financial donations towards the fabric of religious institutions and, arguably, the building of the castle itself. Being remembered, and attempting to be remembered, functioned in various ways to tie communities to the leading families in the region.

There is, however, another layer to commemoration: the desire to receive salvation. The soteriological economy of late medieval Europe dictated that an individual's sin outweighed the power of prayer. In such an economy, the route to Heaven was bound up in the ability of an individual to request prayers from the community of which they were a part. One of the most common forms of religious exchange in late medieval Europe was the purchase of posthumous prayers and masses said by religious communities. In this way, memory was intimately connected to salvation, as the ability of an individual or family to remind the living to pray for their soul with financial incentives would quicken their purgatorial suffering.

The prayer economy during the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries was material in nature, in that money exchanged hands for spiritual goods. Prayers could be bought and sold. Parishioners could, for example, pay to have a special mass said in memory of a deceased loved one or themselves, or they could purchase an indulgence to shorten their time, or someone else's time, in purgatory.